55 replies to this topic

[johnwilliamdavies]

Which year was the Rookie Test when Ricciardo apparently put in some sensational laptimes. It seemed that that was what convinced Marko and co that Dan's future lay with the big team.

 

 

He was good in 2009, but 2010 was everyone went nuts for him - http://forums.autosp...vers-test-2010/

Edited by johnwilliamdavies, 04 October 2014 - 18:25.

[PlatenGlass]

I agree that a lot of it is down to circumstances and being in the right place at the right time. The fact that Christian Horner keeps saying how surprised by Ricciardo he is suggests that they don't really know how good their drivers are and how they compare. And given that Buemi and Alguersuari were got rid of for not beating each other (neither dominated basically), you can't really tell how good they would have been. They might both have been very good. Had Webber gone earlier, one of them might have gone to Red Bull and done well.

But now given how well Ricciardo is doing, Kvyat will have to get up to speed at Red Bull pretty quickly. It could go either way, and if he doesn't keep up, that could be Verstappen's way in (if he's any good in the Toro Rosso).

[redreni]

Yes, there's luck involved in when vacancies come up, obviously. The drivers at Red Bull seem to be kept on as long as they're performing to an acceptable level, whereas the Torro Rosso drivers seem to be viewed as having gone past their sell-by date after three seasons even if they're performing well and have only failed to get promoted because no vacancies came up (e.g. Alguasuari and Buemi) or because they were overlooked for promotion in a rather marginal decision (Vergne). The alternatives are either to have drivers hanging on at Torro Rosso for four or five years or more, creating a log jam in the driver development programme behind them, or to regularly sack whichever Red Bull driver gets beaten by his teammate to create regular vacancies there.

 

They don't do either, so we're bound to see very talented and perfectly competent and experienced F1 drivers leading Torro Rosso in the prime of their careers. If the drivers Red Bull abandons are as good as people think, presumably they'd be picked up by Ferrari or Mclaren (either directly or placed with a midfield or backmarker outfit for assessment), but that doesn't happen so the other big teams seem to be happy to let them drift away.

 

In this particular case, since we've had two vacancies in two years at Red Bull, in theory Vergne should have been saved from the scrapheap and Kvyat should have stayed put. Even if Marko and Newey feel Kvyat has more potential, I can't see what harm it would have done to keep him where he is for at least one more year, meanwhile giving Vergne the chance to prove them wrong by beating Ricciardo at Red Bull. They haven't done that, so it looks like he's on his way out of F1, which is a shame.

[LORDBYRON]

Buemi and Alguersuari could well be in a midfield team if it were not for the fact they cant get backing i am sure its £12 million that max pays his team so a midfield would likely want 20m 

[redreni]

Buemi and Alguersuari could well be in a midfield team if it were not for the fact they cant get backing i am sure its £12 million that max pays his team so a midfield would likely want 20m 

 

Yeah that's my point, though. If Ferrari, say, thought Buemi or Alguersuari a better bet than Bianchi or whoever else they've got their eye on, surely they would stump up the cash and place them in a midfield team? Maybe it's just pride that makes them prefer drivers from the own development programme over Red Bull's rejects, I don't know. But yes, you're not getting an F1 drive these days unless you have considerable personal sponsorship or personal wealth, or you're backed by one of the big teams. So for Vergne, it's a case of being picked up by Ferrari or Mclaren or being out of a drive, I should have thought.

[zanquis]

I think RB needs to think about buying Caterham and make it Green Bull or something. Don't they already supply parts to the team,they will then be only renault teams so they can take over that. And brand the **** out of it